1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and an image forming method.
2. Related Art
An image forming apparatus that performs recording by landing ink droplets (dots) on a medium by ejecting a liquid from nozzles is common. With such an image forming apparatus, printing may be performed using metallic ink that includes metallic particles such as aluminum microparticles as a pigment other than general color ink (for example, each color ink of KCMY).
With metallic printing using metallic ink, since the balance between the metallic luster and the color tone of the printed matter changes according to the amount of metallic particles that are included in the metallic ink, it was difficult to realize metallic printing with a favorable metallic luster at the desired color tone.
On the other hand, in a case when metallic printing is performed using metallic ink that includes aluminum powder as the metallic particles, there is a method of performing printing so that the shape of the metallic image becomes substantially mesh-like. Furthermore, a printing method of performing an adjustment of the metallic luster by controlling the amount of the aluminum powder that is included in the printed matter (image) by changing the size of the mesh has been proposed (for example, JP-A-11-78204).
According to the printing method of JP-A-11-78204, it is possible to print a metallic image with a high image quality and a favorable metallic luster. Such metallic images are sometimes posted at high positions such as on an advertizing banner on the side of a building or an advertisement inside a train. Furthermore, in a case when a user looks diagonally upward from below at a metallic image that is placed in a high place, since the size of the mesh looks different depending on the viewing angle, there appears to be unevenness in the luster and feel of the metallic image.